Accordingly, the first reaction of the music industry power brokers is to say that pirates are making illegal copies of their copyrighted material. Those crisply coifed, sartorially splendid Caucasian fellows, whose combined expense accounts rival the gross national product of most third countries, are correct in assuming their very existence is being threatened. Never before has the middle man suddenly become an endangered species.

This piracy smokescreen is a real scam. It’s a phony issue they’re using to continue ripping off artists. People have always taped recordings, just look at the mountain of blank cassettes in any big record store.

In the old, crumbling configuration, labels existed to finance, manufacture, store, ship and market music, taking a big big cut. But in the digital era, it costs nothing to ship music to listeners. And thanks to DAT recorders, recording music can also be done much more economically. Marketing, ah, therein lies the challenge. But once an artist is established, a web site connects them to their fan base.

As for piracy, labels can’t prevent it. No one can. But don’t tell them they’re wasting their time. In this week’s Billboard’s, the cover story concerns the SDMI’s (Secure Digitial Music Initiative) plan to "filter" downloads. Basically what they plan on doing is eliminating MP3 all together. According to Billboard, "the five major record companies have agreed to integrate watermarking into future production of audio CDs…plans call for new screening and filtering technology to be rolled out in two phases."

"In Phase one, to be implemented by the end of the year, the screen technology will be invisibly integrated into SDMI-compliant digital download players. These players will continue to play unprotected MP3 files during this first phase."

Then Big Brother really steps in: "During the second phase, the filtering technology will be triggered to screen unprotected music content on a computer or portable music device and disable playback of unauthorized music."

This is total bullshit. Anyone who’s worked with computers knows that whatever copy protection scheme the labels will come up will eventually be broken by some kids, somewhere.

The reason the RIAA and the labels are screaming piracy is because they want to take control of digital distribution. They don’t want to give up the power.

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